Library Thing Tuesday (73) + Picture of Emmy

Today's question from Wendi is in honor of Banned Books Week: Do you have any banned books in your Library? If so, how many? Do you remember having any strong reactions or feelings when reading these books? Were any of the books on the list particularly surprising to you?

I have 20 books in my LT library that correspond with the books listed in the BannedBooks LibraryThing account. Since I haven't listed ALL books that I've ever read in there, I'm sure there are a great deal more.

Here are 4 of the 20 and my reactions:

A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess. I read this while on vacation in Burma and I remember it taking a while for me to get into it. I can understand that the violence would turn a lot of people off. My memory of it now is so intermingled with Stanley Kubrick's movie version that I can't really separate them. What strikes me about the book version is the 21 chapter, which was omitted both from the movie and American versions of the book prior to 1986. In it, Alex has finally reached the age of adulthood (21) and renouces his former love of violence - obviously a radically different ending.

Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs. This is one of my least favorite books of all time. I kept waiting for something interesting to happen but it was all this drug induced stream of consciousness nonsense that I strongly disliked. I can't believe I even finished it, though I guess I read this at a time when I finished all books I started no matter what.

Native Son by Richard Wright. This was assigned reading in my high school American Lit class. I know some of the parents complained about this one (not mine). I don't remember too much about it now, but the disturbing scene where he stuffs the girl he accidently killed in the furnace is one that is burned in my memory.

Olive's Ocean by Kevin Henkes. I read this last year and I'm very puzzled as to why someone would want to ban this. I don't recall there being any objectionable content. It was just a sweet book about a pre-teen girl being confronted with death for the first time.

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Whenever we bring a new box into the house, the kittehs must try it out. Usually one at a time, but we recently caught them sharing nicely.



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